


Of Hearts, Lies and Friends

by TruantPunk



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Apartment Era, Blow Jobs, Coming of Age, Dyslexia, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Rimming, Secrets, Unrequited Love, Unsafe Sex, Van Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:59:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruantPunk/pseuds/TruantPunk
Summary: “I came to give you this. Figured it’d be useful.” Patrick opened his eyes in time to see a black book thrown at him. He picked it up with dread, as he did whenever he handled a book. The pages were battered, dog eared. Patrick opened it briefly, and saw pages upon pages of words, all written in thick black lines, crossed out occasionally. Pete’s writing. Patrick got that. That was about as much as he could decipher. Apartment era.





	1. Chapter 1

They’d been sitting in the ER waiting room over an hour and a half. Patrick was starting to think the whole thing was a dumb idea. His converse were dirty, the laces knotted and tucked into the sides of the shoes. If he sat all the way back on the chair, his feet only skimmed the floor. And so he slouched, he sighed, and he heard the familiar chuckle of his friend next to him, laughing at the words on his phone.

“Dude, check this out,” Pete said, waving the phone into Patrick’s face. There was a block of text on the phone. Patrick’s tried to read it, but the words wavered and danced over the screen. He rolled a shoulder and gave Pete a polite smile.

“Why do they always have boyfriends and why do you always get caught?” Patrick said again. That was the reason they were here. Pete had found an ex-girlfriend at the mall with Patrick. The boyfriend had walked in when they’d found some random corner to fuck around in. Pete had a bruised face, a bloody nose and couldn’t breathe through the clutching of his ribs by the time the boyfriend was finished. 

“More fun that way,” Pete shrugged. To give him credit – if he deserved any – the skin was split and peeling across his knuckles. Patrick had rounded the corner at just the right time and attempted to break them apart. Pete had mis-aimed a punch and caught Patrick’s jaw, which was now shadowed with a darkening bruise. Then they’d all been escorted out of the mall and Pete had complained about his ribs being broken so they’d ended up at the closest emergency room.

“Should I call your parents?” Patrick asked. Patrick never got into fights and he’d hardly ever wound up in hospital, so he wasn’t sure what the protocol was.

“I’m an adult, Patrick. I don’t need their signatures of whatever—" Pete shrugged a shoulder and leaned against Patrick’s side. “Dude, if my ribs are cracked you think they’d give me something dope for the pain?”

“Maybe,” Patrick shrugged. There was an elderly couple sitting across from them. Her lips were puckered inwards, like her teeth were still swimming in the glass beside the bed, and they were both in pajamas beneath their long coats. Patrick smiled at them politely. “You want me to get some candy?”

“Sure,” Pete said, hissing as he sat up. Patrick stood and looked at his friend for a few seconds. Pete was skinny, dark and dressed like someone eight years younger. He was cool to everyone on the scene, but Patrick hadn’t been all that enthralled until they’d become friends, a few months after blundering his way into the band. 

Patrick walked out of the double doors of the waiting room and into a chilly foyer where there were three vending machines standing neon bright. Patrick’s reading comprehension was limited to struggling over simple sentences for the most part, but he could do numbers okay and he could work a vending machine. He had enough change in his wallet for a two-fingered candy bar and a can of coke. He pressed the buttons, waiting for them to drop. 

When he wandered back into the waiting room, Pete cheered up over the can of coke and pulled it from Patrick’s hand. He drank it down quickly and then banged his chest as the gas bubbles hit. 

“Hey, Patrick are you gay?” Pete asked out of nowhere. He’d probably said it quietly, but Patrick heard the words like he’d shouted it across the room. Patrick looked over to the elderly couple, but the wife had her head on her husband’s shoulder, her eyes closed. Patrick turned to Pete, who was staring at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Dunno,” he said after a while. “Maybe.”

“S’alright. I’m a bit, sometimes,” Pete said. He handed Patrick the nearly empty can and leaned into him. “I can hook you up with someone if you want.”

“No, you’re okay,” Patrick could feel that his cheeks were pink under his glasses. He had a girlfriend once. They’d been in separate classes in school, bonded over music, but then she’d found out that he couldn’t read the menu in the restaurant she wanted to go to and he’d dumped her before she could ask any questions.

No one knew. Aside from his family, of course, because they were the ones concerned when he wasn’t reading like everyone else. They tried the colored backgrounds, the larger font, but it hadn’t improved. He didn’t write, ever. His parents had bought him cassettes to listen to books on; he’d had to suffer the humiliation of a _scribe_ when his exams had rolled around. 

And no one in the band could ever know that Patrick was borderline illiterate. They let him write the music. He wasn’t thrilled when they decided that Pete needed to write the lyrics, but so far they’d worked together. Pete would rewrite lyrics in front of Patrick. Patrick would record the sessions and try and memorize the lyrics. It was longwinded, but he hadn’t been caught out yet. Plus, he was the singer. They didn’t need the words written down. If they did, he’d send them to Pete.

“Earth to Patrick.” Patrick blinked out of his reverie when Pete’s voice filtered through his ear drums again. “I know some that would like you.”

“Please don’t.” Patrick pursed his lips. Of course, he had thought about it. The worst part was how he’d accidentally walked in on Pete and some girl. He was taking the girl from behind, his face in her neck, her hands pressed against the wall. Patrick had half wanted to burn the vision from his eyes. The other half wanted to know what it was like. To have Pete’s face in his neck, his own body pressed to the wall, arching around Pete’s…Patrick swallowed thickly. He didn’t let himself go there too much. He chalked it up to being eighteen and nothing else. Pete liked girls that were with other boys, not his dopey bandmate. 

As Pete had drunk nearly the entire can of Coke, Patrick didn’t bother sharing his candy. He got to sit in on the examination when they were finally sent through. Pete had to have stitches in his hairline, where his scalp had opened, but his nose wasn’t broken. 

“Thank fucking God for that,” Pete said to Patrick, as if a broken nose would ruin their chance of success forever. The doctor left the room to organize someone to take Pete down for x-ray to check on his ribs, and Pete pointed to the chart hanging from the end of the bed. “Read the chart, Patrick. What does it say?”

“I’m not a doctor,” Patrick said, getting out of it. He chewed his bar of candy and swallowed it down. He’d learned early in life that the more excuses you made, the harder it was to lie. Pete looked at him with narrowed eyes, but then shrugged.

“Whatever, dude. Guess I should thank you for being here.”

“It’s alright,” Patrick said, with a shrug. “I don’t mind.”

 

 

Patrick worked at a grocery store stacking shelves, when they weren’t being underpaid for gigs across the state. It was boring, but he was hardly ever caught in sticky situations. He worked the fruit and veg department and it was all standard. He replenished apples when they were low on stock, he kept the area tidy; he helped guide customers to the correct aisle when they wandered over frazzled and lost. 

“Have you applied for the job going at the record store?” Joe asked, back at their measly excuse for an apartment. Joe worked at a comic store, which was warm and cozy and fun, but filled with words that made Patrick’s eyes dizzy. His brother had been a fan of comics growing up and Patrick had tried to read them, but mostly looked at the photos.

“Not yet,” Patrick said absentmindedly. He’d love to work there; half his wage was spent meticulously selecting vinyl to add to the growing amount he already owned. He’d memorized the layout; Pop was beckoning the customer in by the door, the latest releases on display in the middle; jazz, blues, world music across the furthest wall, and metal and rock just across from it. Patrick knew where to look depending on his current mood, but that was about as much as he could do. Working the till, browsing stock. Even shelving would require an ability to read about ten grades above what he could. “Still thinking about it.”

“It’s perfect for you,” Joe said quickly, but he was smart enough to leave it at that. If Patrick could read then yeah, working there would be awesome, but as it was, Patrick was better off stacking shelves.

They played gigs at least twice a week, nearly always arranged by Pete, who was pretty much manager _and_ marketing. He’d ask Patrick’s opinion on flyers or shirts and Patrick would shrug and nod. That was not his domain.

Despite the nerves, Patrick enjoyed performing. He liked that if he took the time to peek over his hat, people were singing their shitty songs back. He liked that on a few occasions, people left after they finished so that the main band got less views then they did. It made him feel almost like they were on to a winner. 

After the show one of Pete’s friends popped up from nowhere, trying to talk to Patrick. Patrick had packed his amp and guitar up, loading them into Joe’s car, because they only had the crappy van when they were going out of state. This friend of Pete’s was making it pretty hard though, he followed Patrick around wherever he went.

“Pete said you might be gay,” the guy said, after a while of following Patrick around, asking mundane questions. Patrick felt his cheeks turn pink. He hadn’t said the comment in confidence, but he would have liked for Pete not to spread it around like a rumor. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Patrick answered. He was bending down to fiddle with the mic stand. The guy, Patrick didn’t know his name, was still blatantly staring, nodding his head in approval. “I don’t think I’m your type.”

“That doesn’t matter,” the guy said, but Patrick was fairly sure it did. This was a Pete clone; taller, paler, his face narrower with a ring through his lip, but he had that air about him like Pete. Like he liked girls and guys to look the same; painfully thin, tattooed, and usually crying. Patrick was none of the above. “I like ‘em a bit fat.”

“Uh.” Patrick wasn’t offended on the highest level. He couldn’t really call it puppy fat, he supposed, but it still clung like a soft swelling layer against his stomach, his thighs. He wasn’t interested in this dude anyway and being referred to as ‘a bit fat’ hadn’t really helped things along. “You should probably find someone else. I’m not interested.”

Patrick’s night didn’t end terribly, because he went back to the apartment and played the mixtape he’d made months ago. It was the best one he’d mixed; where all the songs seemed to calm him or fit the mood of a post-show glow. Sometimes he went to parties with the rest of the guys, but he wasn’t feeling it tonight, and he didn’t want any other tall emo friend of Pete’s trying it on with him. 

There was a knock on his door later on. Patrick had dozed off with his earbuds still in, though he blinked and sat up, watching as Pete rounded the corner. He had eyeliner smeared under each eye and a black book in his hand.

“You pissed at me?” Pete asked, dropping onto Patrick’s bed beside him. He smelled like cigarette smoke. His latest girlfriend smoked. She’d been using an old can of Pepsi as an ashtray the last time she was over, looking surly as she curled up on the couch, staring daggers around the room. 

“That guy called me a bit fat. He likes them that way. I bet he doesn’t,” Patrick said, trying to sound huffy. For whatever reason, Pete had been deemed a cool dude by a ton of people in life and so Patrick felt almost excited that he’d clearly skipped out on a party to sit here on Patrick’s single bed, pressed too close together. 

“He dated a pregnant chick once, does that count?” Pete teased. He rolled onto his side, so that he was staring at Patrick’s profile. Patrick gave him a sideways look, trying not to smile. “I was just trying to help out.”

“I get that, but please don’t,” Patrick said laughing. “Is everyone bisexual in this scene? Are all your friends bi? That’s weird.”

Pete was laughing too, but it felt mostly at Patrick rather than anything else. “Dude, we’re all just really horny.”

“I guess.” Patrick closed his eyes. He wasn’t that tired, but it was nice laying there with Pete. Once he left, Patrick would be able to smell him on his sheets still. Smoke, that expensive cologne he wore like a ritual at their shows. He could bury his face in the scent and just pretend, maybe, that he’d been there for other reasons.

“I also came to give you this.” Patrick opened his eyes in time to see a black book thrown at him. He picked it up with dread, as he did most times he handled a book. The pages were battered in this book, dog eared. Patrick opened it briefly, and saw pages upon pages of words, all written in thick black lines, crossed out occasionally. Pete’s writing. Patrick got that. 

“What is it?” Patrick said nervously. He knew what it was already. He worked that much out, but why he was being handed it was another thing.

“We need new songs and I got a new journal to fill. Figured you could look through this one and come up with some ideas. For songs. You know?” Patrick felt sick but nodded his head all the same. Pete’s lyrics were better than his own, but that didn’t mean it was easy. It didn’t mean that he could sift through the book and pick it all out.

“Good idea,” Patrick said, trying to smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

Patrick ignored the book for days. It stayed on his makeshift nightstand of records, black and imposing despite being little more than pocket sized. Every so often, he’d sit on the side of his bed, in his work uniform, and open the well-thumbed pages. Pete’s angular writing stood bold against the pages, but the words still danced in front of him. The more he tried to make it out, the harder he found it to decipher. 

“Have you found anything worth writing yet?” Pete asked a week later, sprawled on the couch. They needed at least a few songs down before they would book studio time to record the album. They’d agreed on that. They’d even collected a pot of money to put toward the time in the studio; Pete’s parents had offered to make up the rest. 

“I’ve been busy. Next week,” Patrick lied with an easy smile, then went off to take a shower.

Pete loved to read and that’s what embarrassed Patrick the most. Patrick would come home from work and on the nights that Pete was at the apartment, he’d often be laying out on the couch, holding some book open. Sometimes they were thinner than others. When Patrick came out of the shower, it was a heavy tome. 

“You read this?” Patrick eyed the cover. Sometimes he recognized covers. He had the Harry Potter CD and the covers matched the real books. He knew what those looked like and Pete had burned his way through the fifth one three weeks ago. He squinted at the cover, at the heavy black typeface he made out an ‘and’ but that was it.

“I don’t think so,” Patrick said, taking a seat beside Pete. The crush he had on Pete was one of those silly ones; the ones where he knew it was dumb because nothing would ever happen. Because even though Pete did guys sometimes, he hadn’t shown any real inclination to _do_ Patrick and anyway, he read books for fun and Patrick couldn’t even make out the title.

“War and Peace, dude,” Pete said. “Wasn’t sure if you did it at school.”

Patrick shook his head and took his glasses off. He cleaned them with the bottom of his shirt and could tell that Pete was looking at him. He didn’t dare look back. They had a show tomorrow night, and someone was throwing a party afterward. Patrick presumed there would be another emo dude that Pete knew, lined up to try and flirt with Patrick. Every show they’d done since that guy had hit on Patrick, more had shown up out of the woodwork, on Pete’s demands.

“They’re only gonna call me frigid,” Patrick started to say, and then realized the train of thought hadn’t been vocalized to Pete, who when Patrick finally stared at him, was looking at him in confusion. “The guy you throw my way tomorrow. They’re gonna call me frigid when I don’t wanna sleep with them.”

“You don’t like any of them?” Pete asked. They had all been variant of Pete; bad flat ironed haircuts, chunky metal belts and surly black t-shirts. They fact that they were almost Pete but not quite was pretty much the thing that humiliated Patrick the most. “’Cause if Bowie is your taste I don’t know anyone like that.”

“I just like his music,” Patrick shrugged. He looked at Pete again, who had the large book open on his chest and his feet up on the coffee table. He technically had a job, but so far hadn’t been fired despite being a no-show most days. Patrick didn’t get it. “You don’t have to set me up with anyone.”

“You just always look so damn uncomfortable,” Pete shrugged. “Figured if you were getting fucked you might loosen up a bit.”

Patrick knew that he was turning pink at Pete’s words, and he desperately tried not to think about Pete thinking about him getting fucked. It made him squirm a little inside. 

“Maybe,” Patrick shrugged after a while. “I don’t know.”

Patrick stayed in his bedroom after that, too uncomfortable to be sitting and sharing the same couch as Pete. Part of him wanted to say that if Pete was so desperate for Patrick to loosen up and get fucked, then maybe he should do the job himself. Then he cringed at the idea, because Patrick was anything but Pete’s type and he’d be putting it all out there. No thanks.

So he played guitar. He played around with some of the melodies in his head. He had to make up his own words, because he couldn’t touch Pete’s notebook. What little he could read with a clear mind was washed away when he was upset, or angry.

 

They were late to the show the next night and it was all Patrick’s fault. Only because they made him drive and he didn’t know where he was going. He was a fine driver if he was heading from the apartment back to his mom’s house, or the school run. He could even do the forty-minute trip to his grandmother’s house, but only because he was so well practiced in the route that he didn’t need the signs. 

Now, they were performing in the suburbs, of some small Chicago district that he didn’t know and he’d been on the highway too long and Pete, sitting in the back with his girlfriend, had called him a dumbass, and to read the signs better. The green signs didn’t clarify anything to Patrick; he was too tense, the singular white letters were dancing around, becoming illegible.

“Take the next exit,” Joe said quietly to Patrick. He’d been silent for a while. At first fiddling with the radio, but then Patrick had felt he was being watched and when he’d sneaked a quick look at Joe, he was staring at Patrick thoughtfully.

They arrived five minutes before they were supposed to go on, meeting up with Andy, who didn’t like to travel with them, or really hang out at their place. He seemed unsurprised that they were late and wholly unprepared. Their guitars weren’t tuned, and their own amps had to stay in the back of the car. Joe had quietly directed Patrick the rest of the way to the show, and Pete was back to being somewhat good natured.

The show still went off okay. Pete’s girlfriend was at the bar, talking to a guy. She was too young to be in here, just like Patrick and Joe, but Pete was pissed, Patrick could tell. It made the show a little more punk-rock, Patrick guessed. He just sang the lyrics and played the guitar and let the atmosphere just fall around him.

They weren’t the main act, but people were acting like they were. Pete was like a rockstar. He’d been well-known since forever, even Patrick had known who he was before the band started, but girls were getting excited at him and – if Patrick was being serious – so were their boyfriends. Everyone, really, apart from Pete’s girlfriend, who was laughing at whatever the bar tender was saying. 

Chris was hosting the after party, which meant they all had to drive across suburbia again, just to get a little closer to town. Joe hopped in the driver’s seat once they’d loaded all their gear in. Pete was in the back with some new friends, without his girlfriend. Patrick was just happy the show was a success. People were, believe it or not, singing along. To the crappy lyrics Patrick had penned, and the three that Pete had written. 

The drinks were all alcoholic at Chris’ place, which was kinda weird because he was straight edge, but Patrick didn’t make anything about it. His Coke was spiked with something bitter, but he drank it anyway. There was noise and excitement coming from all directions. He didn’t know where his bandmates were, but it didn’t matter. Patrick was okay being by himself. At least there was no man, on Pete’s orders, attempting to hit on him.

Patrick pulled his phone from his pocket when it started to vibrate. The phone was old. His brother’s old Nokia. Before Kevin had gone to college and upgraded to a better cell, he’d sat with Patrick and showed him how it worked. Patrick didn’t send texts, and could barely read the ones he did get, but Kevin had shown him how speed dial worked, and he’d memorized what number reached who. 

His friends had learned that Patrick wasn’t good with texting so always called him. Emailing was better, because his parents had bought him expensive software that turned words into sound. But everyone had learned that the only way to get hold of Patrick was by making him pick up a phone.

“Hey,” Patrick said down the phone. He was now sharing the couch with a comatose drunk girl with jeans so tight, the top half of her body seemed a size larger. When he looked up, Joe was talking to his girlfriend. They were laughing. They were holding hands.

“Hey sugar,” It was Pete. He was in this room somewhere, so Patrick wasn’t sure why he was calling. Pete’s phone was new. All of his shit was. You had to flip the screen to open it. On the back was a camera that took grainy photos. Patrick was glad for the safety and heaviness of his own hand-me-down brick. 

“Sorry I got us lost,” Patrick said into the phone. Someone almost landed on his lap, laughing as he rough-housed someone. Patrick rolled out from underneath him, losing his plastic cup of boozy soda.

“You must be some kind of magic to manage that,” Pete joked. “You look lost. Bored. Wanna leave?” Patrick looked around the room for Pete, trying to see him, or work out where he was. Dudes dressed in black, with flat ironed hair, were a dime a dozen. Patrick looked the odd one out, he figured. Even Joe had a pieced lip now.

He looked over toward the tiny cluttered kitchenette and saw Pete’s glinting eyes smirking at him. Patrick gave a goofy smile and hung up, making his way over to Pete. They left. Pete was drinking tap water from the plastic cup, which seemed weird, but Pete _was_ weird, and Patrick didn’t want to judge.

“You did good tonight,” Pete said, elbowing Patrick’s side gently as they left. They lived twenty minutes from Chris’ apartment, but it was shorter if you cut through the park. It was bolted shut, but they could climb the fence. They’d done it hundreds of times before.

“Our guitars were awful,” Patrick said, not listening to the compliment. “I couldn’t compete with that. Anything sounds better than that.”

“I don’t know.” Pete threw an arm over Patrick’s shoulder, tossing the cup into the trash. Patrick didn’t want to be lame enough to feel excited by the touch, but he was anyway. “Sometimes when you sing it’s insane. I dunno anyone that talented.”

“Why are you being so nice?” Patrick asked with a nervous laugh. They approached the chicken mesh walls of the park, but Patrick pulled to a stop, slightly confused. “Usually on the nights you fight with your girlfriends you’re kinda mean and bitchy.”

“Trying out something new,” Pete smirked. He touched the side of Patrick’s cheek and stepped closer. Patrick felt his stomach drop slightly. He stepped back, until his back was pressed against the metal wire. Pete just stepped in closer. He curled his fingers into the mesh, either side of Patrick’s head. He was a little taller, and crowded against the metal, Patrick felt small. Pete’s breath was on his face, and Patrick felt caught out, his stupid crush obvious. He hadn’t known that Pete knew. “I know how you feel, Patrick, about me.”

“Oh,” was all that Patrick could muster. Maybe it had been obvious. He always had Pete’s back in fights. He waited for him in the ER, he said he might be gay, but turned down every possible suitor that Pete sent his way. “It isn’t a big deal.”

“You’re cool, Patrick,” Pete said, but Patrick didn’t know what that meant. It didn’t matter, because Pete was kissing him. Patrick had been kissed before, he’d kissed other people before, but not like this. He was pressed up against the mesh, Pete’s chest pushing into his. Patrick opened his mouth and Pete’s tongue slid inside. Pete’s hands were still gripping tight to the mesh either side of Patrick’s head, but Patrick didn’t know what to do with his hands. Touching Pete’s neck felt too needy, his hips too desperate. In the end, he gently rested them on Pete’s chest, feeling his heart beat.

“Wow,” Patrick said lamely, when they pulled apart, and then wished he hadn’t when Pete laughed at him. He felt like a kid. His glasses were askew, so he removed his hands from Pete’s chest and adjusted the glasses on his face. 

“Everything about you is so soft,” Pete said, almost in wonder. Patrick shrugged a shoulder, watching Pete wipe his mouth gently. The moment was broken when Pete stepped away and started to climb the flimsy fence, hopping over to the other side. Patrick had less grace, but did the same, falling to his hands and knees on the other side. Pete helped him up and Patrick only felt half as embarrassed. He’d just made out with Pete. He was finding it hard to focus on anything else.

“I guess I could do with dropping a few pounds,” Patrick said, remembering Pete’s comment about his softness. They weren’t holding hands, but Pete’s knuckles kept grazing Patrick’s. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Pete said. “You’re just soft. You’re gentle and kind. Like an open wound that hasn’t learned to scab over.”

“That’s gross,” Patrick said. “Thanks, I guess.”

They walked the rest of the way in relative silence. Patrick wanted to know what the kiss meant; whether Pete was just thanking Patrick for his weird softness, or did it mean more. _Trying something new._ Was he trying Patrick out as relationship material? He didn’t understand.

By the time they made it back to the apartment, Patrick was fumbling for the key and slipping it in the lock, while Pete fiddled with his phone. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, he felt nervous in the presence of Pete, which was odd. He’d never felt nervous. Not even when Pete had shown up on his doorstep two years back, a mini celebrity. Patrick had been unimpressed. The crush hadn’t been developed right away. 

When he closed the door, Pete was close to him again. He had his hands on Patrick’s waist, squeezing. There would be more fat on Patrick’s body than Pete was used to. He liked his girlfriend’s birdlike, petite. Patrick was as short as his girlfriend, but puppy fat was still cupping his body in annoying areas. 

“None of those dudes I sent your way were good enough, huh?” Pete teased. His teeth grazed Patrick’s throat. Patrick tried not to shiver. He didn’t want to be passive in this, but he didn’t really understand what Pete wanted from him. 

“You want me too?” Patrick asked instead. The answer should be obvious, he figured. Pete had hands on his hips, and his lips on Patrick’s neck. It just seemed to come out of knowhere. “I didn’t know you liked me like that.”

“’Cause I’m not soft,” Pete teased. His lips found Patrick’s. Patrick couldn’t grow facial hair yet, but he could feel Pete’s stubble every time his cheek brushed Patrick’s. “I don’t let it show.”

Patrick was backed onto the couch, and Pete was climbing on top of him. He opened his mouth and Pete’s tongue found his again. Pete’s hands were on his hips, stroking over his stomach, up his ribcage. Patrick figured he was the least soft on his back, when the puppiness would distribute a little more evenly and he’d almost have hipbones. Pete didn’t seem to care though. 

“I’ve not done it before,” Patrick managed to say, when Pete’s hand had unbuckled his belt and pulled down his zipper. Patrick felt young and silly. He’d done it with a girl, of course, back with the only girl he’d dated, before she realized he was stupid and he’d run from her. But with a dude he hadn’t. 

“I’ll be gentle with you,” Pete said, putting the implication on what role Patrick would be playing. He didn’t mind. It’s what he wanted; it’s how he imagined he’d want it. When he thought about sex with guys, it was always with the idea of getting fucked. Not doing the fucking. He wasn’t sure why. “Get the impression you don’t want that.”

“Want what?” Patrick said, but he was finding it hard to breathe because Pete’s hand had slipped into his underwear and was curling around him. Pete was giving him a hand-job. He couldn’t quite believe it. He looked at Pete, who was half on top of Patrick, with a sneer on his dark features. 

“I don’t think you want it gentle,” Pete said, and his hand pulled away from Patrick. He leaned down, pressing his bodyweight onto Patrick, a hand falling into Patrick’s hair and tugging. Patrick could feel the pull against his scalp, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. He just liked Pete.

“I just want you,” Patrick said. He couldn’t blush now, because his dick was hanging from his pants and his best friend was on top of him, blowing hot air across Patrick’s cheek. Pete was bony; he was heavy. Patrick could feel the bulge in his pants pressing against his own hip.

“What do you want?” Pete teased, and Patrick squirmed. Pete’s hand in his hair softened, sliding gentle damp fingers down Patrick’s cheek instead. He touched Patrick’s bottom lip and Patrick opened his mouth without thinking. Pete didn’t slide his fingers into Patrick’s mouth, but rested his thumb against Patrick’s bottom lip. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

“Fuck me.” Patrick said it quietly. It sounded silly out in the open, like the noisy refrigerator would judge him with a gasp; like the broken coffee maker would hiss in disgust. He swallowed, aware of Pete’s dark eyes on him, the hard dick at his thigh. 

Pete stood up all of a sudden and Patrick was left feeling cold. He frowned and tried to sit up as well, but Pete’s shook he head, and kissed him once on the lips, pressing down on Patrick’s chest until he was laying down again.

“No matter how much you want this, you’re not getting wet for me,” Pete said with a laugh. “I’m gonna get lube. Take your pants off, put the pillows under your back. I’ll be back.”

Patrick stripped off nervously as Pete left. Pete had only said take his pants off, so Patrick kept his t-shirt on. He plucked his glasses off and tossed them onto the coffee table. He piled a throw cushion that his own mom had bought them onto the couch and then laid back on the couch again. With the cushion under his back, his ass was tilted upwards slightly. He felt a weird lick of excitable shame crawl inside.

Pete was gone for longer than it would take to grab lube from his bedside drawer. Patrick didn’t mind. He traced a pattern on his thigh with his finger. This was not how he envisioned his day ending, not after everyone had been slightly mad at his directions in the car, but he couldn’t complain. 

Pete came back eventually, skidding into the room. He was still fully dressed, but again, this weird excitable shame crossed over Patrick’s insides. He was nearly naked and Pete wasn’t. Pete was staring at him on the couch. Oh shit, Patrick realized. He’d never look at the grungy old couch again. He would lose his virginity here. To his best friend and bandmate. 

“I was looking for condoms, I’m all out,” Pete said, and Patrick felt a brief stab of jealousy. Pete was out of condoms because he’d used them up with someone else. Patrick had some in his room, _just in case_ and Joe had had a steady girlfriend for a few months now, but neither of them mentioned it. 

“I don’t mind,” Patrick shrugged. His mom would kill him for saying that, but then, he wasn’t likely to tell her he was partaking in anal sex. Not with Pete. She wouldn’t want it to be with him. “Will it hurt?”

“A little,” Pete said softly. He climbed back onto the couch, this time moving Patrick’s legs so he was between them. Patrick’s shoulders were down on the couch, the other side of the hump from the cushion. It was probably a really bad angle for him, but Pete didn’t seem to mind, he was curling his body over Patrick’s, kissing his way across Patrick’s chin. “Have you fingered yourself before? Played with anything?”

“Uh.” Patrick swallowed and shrugged. Slowly he nodded. “Only fingers.” Pete laughed, but it didn’t seem to be at him. His hands were gentle on Patrick’s damp thighs. 

“Just trying to work out how tight you’ll be,” Pete said. “Tight is good, but I don’t want the circulation cut off from my dick.”

Patrick laughed nervously. “I’ll be good. Promise,” he said. He saw something flicker on Pete’s face at the comment, but then the moment passed, and they were kissing again. Pete was kissing him. Touching his face, his hands going lower, moving over to Patrick’s thighs.

Patrick just pretended to be so into the kissing that he didn’t hear the sound of a plastic cap flicking open. He knew his body was tensing up, but Pete lowered his head. He shoved Patrick’s shirt up until it was under his arms. Patrick was breathing heavy, as Pete mouthed in the middle of his chest. He could feel two fingers, cold and covered in slick lube pressing inside. Pete wasn’t gentle enough to wait for Patrick to stop clenching. He pushed past it, right up to the second knuckle.

“Mmm okay,” Patrick said, only slightly overwhelmed. He really really hoped Joe was going to either stay at Chris’ house or his girlfriend’s, so he wouldn’t walk in on this. Pete’s fingers were moving in and out of Patrick’s body, testing the tightness. He wriggled up, still fully clothed against Patrick’s damp nakedness.

“Do you think of me when you do this to yourself?” Pete asked. He was still fingering Patrick, still leaning against one of Patrick’s thighs, keeping him spread, but he was dragging down his own zipper now. 

“Sometimes,” Patrick admitted. He couldn’t blush at this point, not when his dick was hard from being fingered, when he was spread out naked for his friend, his ass higher than his head. He was used to the fingers now and tightened playfully around them.

“Damn, I wish I could see properly right now,” Pete was saying. He had his hand wrapped around his dick, watching his fingers pumping in and out of Patrick. Patrick’s thighs were shaking and he moaned, sometimes, when Pete angled his fingers a certain way. 

Then Pete’s fingers weren’t inside him anymore. Patrick closed his eyes to the sound of the lube slicking Pete’s dick. He felt hands on his thighs, dragging him higher over the cushion. He opened them when Pete told him to. He moaned and his eyelashes fluttered when he felt the head of Pete’s dick pressing against his ass.

It wasn’t going to fit. He’d only used fingers before, and Pete’s girth was significantly thicker than fingers. Neither he or Pete had particularly large hands. He was telling Pete it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t fit, even when his thighs were pushed back, when Pete was leaning over him.

He felt the movement of Pete giving a solid thrust, and it didn’t occur to him why until he felt the give of his body. He _opened._ He made a noise, right in the back of his throat. He was impaled, split open around a wet, thick dick. His best friend’s. They were doing it on the couch. On the cushion his mom had given them. Joe spilled _Kool Aid_ in this very spot two weeks ago. They hadn’t been able to get rid of the stain. They’d flipped the cushion instead.

“Damn, Patrick.” Patrick didn’t know that his eyes had closed until they fluttered open to see Pete’s dark head on his chest, his eyes hazy. Patrick could see his own body was shaking, that’s why Pete was jolting on his chest. “Damn, baby.”

Patrick had never been called baby before, but he also had never had a seven-inch dick in his ass. He wasn’t sure how much he’d taken, but it was inside him, and Pete was moving and Patrick found the entire thing so odd, but he couldn’t help but feel slightly owned. 

He was being fucked. There was a hand around his dick. That’s when he realized what was happening. Pete was up on his knees, still clothed, with his jeans and briefs by his knees. He was thrusting in and out of Patrick. And Patrick liked it. He was writhing, wanting more, maybe less. He couldn’t tell. 

The weird sensation felt good after a few moments. Like, it was still strange having Pete’s cock slide in and out, never fully out, but teasing Patrick’s body into thinking it might be. It was meant to hurt; it was supposed to be awkward. 

“I want you to…” Patrick started to say, but he wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t sure what he wanted Pete to do. He laughed at himself, not realizing that he tightened when he did such a thing, until Pete gave a thick moan.

“I want you to come,” Pete said instead. He paused, still buried inside, but leaned over Patrick, until he was on top again. Patrick liked it like that, when he could feel Pete’s body pressing his down. Pete kissed Patrick’s face. “I want you to come with my dick in your ass.”

“I think that’s, like, definitely gonna happen,” Patrick laughed, but Pete didn’t. He grabbed Patrick’s hand, that were on Pete’s shoulders and squeezed his wrists. He flipped them up over Patrick’s head and pressed them down. Then he started to thrust again.

“Oh fuck,” Patrick said. Pete was pinning his wrists down, and fucking his ass, and Patrick couldn’t move. Somehow he’d given up any sense of control. Pete owned him; he could do anything and Patrick would let him. Wanted him to. “Please. Please.”

“You like being a good boy for me?” Pete asked. He was good at this, Patrick was fairly certain. No wonder his fucked up relationships always lasted. The sex was good. Patrick was nodding his head. He couldn’t move. He could do nothing but let Pete use him, fuck him, treat him like this until he came and came and came.

Pete let go of Patrick’s wrists, once Patrick had come. Patrick would be embarrassed. If you were a guy, you were supposed to come with something touching your dick; a hand, a mouth, a body. He hadn’t. Pete still went on for a couple of minutes after Patrick. He was sore and his body was aching. When Pete did come, it was with a shout, his sharp narrow hips pressed between the shaking softness of Patrick’s thighs, his face into the dampness of Patrick’s neck.

Pete lay there for a few moments. Patrick wrapped his arms over him. If Patrick was exhausted from just laying there and taking it like a champ, he couldn’t imagine how Pete was feeling; he’d put in all the work.

“This is gonna feel weird,” Pete said, stirring from Patrick’s neck. His hair was slightly frizzy now, but Patrick liked the rough drag of stubble against his jawline. He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling of Pete pulling out of his body now. He was soft, of course, but the emptiness felt weird after. He felt fingers against his ass briefly, touching where he was tender and well, a little loose. 

“That is weird,” Patrick said, cupping his hands over his face. He’d been aware the whole time that he was very naked against Pete, who wasn’t, but it felt more obvious now, when he heard Pete tuck himself away and do up the zipper.

“Go to your bedroom, Patrick. Before you leak all over the couch,” Pete said. His hand was gentle against Patrick’s thigh. He closed Patrick’s legs and helped him up. Patrick’s jeans and underwear were on the floor. Patrick bent to pick them up and felt the trickle of Pete’s come slide down his leg. He didn’t know what to say so he limped off. 

Pete followed right behind Patrick. He’d taken his shirt off, which seemed weird now the deed was over. Patrick fell onto his bed and pulled his shirt down. He didn’t want to move forever. Pete joined him, smiling, his messed up hair pushed out of his face. They lay side by side on the bed. Patrick felt a bit giddy, even when Pete’s fingers moved between Patrick’s legs. 

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Pete said. “You didn’t bleed.” His fingers were pushing against Patrick’s tender skin, were he was leaking Pete’s come. It was sort of embarrassing, really. Made Patrick feel a bit slutty. He was still shaking slightly. 

“It didn’t really hurt. It was just weird,” Patrick answered. Pete’s fingers were inside him again and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say anything or not. He wasn’t doing much but holding them there. “Why didn’t you take your clothes off?”

“Because you liked how we did it,” Pete said gently. His fingers tugged to the side and Patrick couldn’t help but hiss. Pete’s hand pulled away. Patrick watching him wipe them on his own jeans before touching Patrick’s waist. “I was in control. You wanted me to be.”

“I hadn’t done it before,” Patrick shrugged, pretending as if he hadn’t liked it. As if he hadn’t come harder because he’d been put on display with his wrists pinned over his head. “Next time can you take your clothes off though?”

“Sure.” Pete smiled, and Patrick leaned in to kiss him. It was gentle this time. Patrick closed his eyes briefly and laughed. “I’ve liked you for a really long time.”

“I know.” Pete sounded like he was going to say something else, but it got caught. “I’m glad you didn’t go with any of those dudes I sent your way.”

“Same.” Patrick was tired, all of a sudden, and he wanted to lay there with Pete and not care about anything else. Pete was moving though, sitting up from Patrick’s bed. Patrick opened his eyes and smiled up at him. “What?”

“I gotta take a shower. Get out of these jeans,” he said. He was smiling at Patrick tight lipped. “This is so lame, but you look beautiful right now.”

“Thanks,” Patrick said, laughing. “Then can we go to sleep? I’m beat.”

Patrick watched Pete leave his bedroom before sitting up. Yeah, that felt weird. He pulled back the sheets on his bed and looked between his legs. There was a small pool of slickness that had leaked from him. Not helped, he figured, by Pete opening him up again a few minutes ago. He didn’t understand that part. 

Patrick wiped at the sheets and between his thighs with his t-shirt once he’d pulled it over his head. He was naked. Pete had seen him more or less naked, he’d watched Patrick take his dick. He’d fingered Patrick and kissed him and called him a good boy. He’d fucked Patrick’s ass until he came and then he stuck his fingers in afterward, to feel Patrick again. Weird.

The shower stopped running after ten minutes, Patrick had climbed back into the bed, a little chilly, waiting for Pete. He heard the sound of Pete’s bedroom door; the way it always creaked louder than anyone else’s. Patrick flopped down onto the pillows and sighed. Pete was in his bedroom at least five minutes before his door creaked open again. Patrick heard Pete’s footsteps across the floor, heavier, like he was wearing shoes. They paused outside Patrick’s door, and then, Patrick heard them walking further away. He heard the sound of the apartment door opening, closing. 

“Oh,” he said to himself, dumbfounded. His eyesight started to waver, but he kept his cheek down to the pillow, pretending like he misheard it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback for the last part, hope you enjoy the rest of the story :-)

Pete disappeared for a week. It wasn’t something unusual. He had a whole floor to himself at his parent’s house. He would hang out there if he got tired of living with teenagers, or his lows hit too low. Ordinarily, Patrick wouldn’t think anything of it.

He was having a hard time with it this time around. He had to wear long sleeves because Pete had bruised his wrists. It was proof it had happened. Pete had fucked him and held Patrick's hands over his head and squeezed until he felt the bones, and Patrick had been left with purple mottling over his wrists. 

The couch was a constant reminder, too. He ate grilled cheese in the kitchen, straight from the pan. He hadn’t cooked it long enough. The cheese was still cold in the middle, but Patrick stared at the gray beat up couch and pictured them on it in the dark. Patrick had been nearly naked; Pete fully clothed. Patrick tried to trace every embarrassing comment he may have said to Pete. He hadn’t said I love you but he had let Pete finger him afterward. He’d sat naked in his bed, waiting for Pete to come back. 

“Did you guys fight?” Joe asked, breaking Patrick’s reverie. He was drinking coffee and standing in his bedroom doorway. He had his socks pulled up high, neither matching the other. He was looking confused at how intent Patrick had been staring at the couch. “You could call him.”

“We’re not fighting,” Patrick said softly. He told himself to get over it because it wouldn’t work anyway. They’d have to tell each other things; Patrick would have to admit that he couldn’t read so he couldn’t write the lyrics for the band, and they were hardly gonna kick Pete out of the band, were they? He’d have to go. 

When Joe was at work and not staring in confusion at Patrick, Patrick wandered into Pete’s bedroom. It was a mess. Clothes on the floor, drawer to the bedside cabinet open. Patrick sat on his mattress and looked at the floor to ceiling bookcase. It was filled with books, the gaps stuffed with toys and action figures. Mostly books. So many books that Patrick couldn’t and wouldn’t ever read. On the floor, poking out from under the bed was the heavy book Pete had been reading those few weeks back. War and Peace. Patrick picked it up, opened the pages to see thousands of words in tiny black typeface bleeding into each other. He knew the book was Russian, this was a translated edition, but it may as well be in its original language for all Patrick could understand. 

His heart hurt; he felt embarrassed. His wrists were bruised, and he didn’t have anyone to tell it to. He picked the book up and wandered back over to his own bedroom with it, to maybe cry it out some more. 

When Patrick came home from work a day later, Pete was back in the apartment. He also appeared to be back with his girlfriend. They were curled up on the couch. Their stupid matching haircuts, her in his hoodie. He had his arm over her shoulder, she had her hand on his thigh. Patrick had his earbuds in, but he was certain he could hear the sound of his heart breaking, just that little bit more. 

Pete, for what it was worth, was doing his best to not look Patrick in the eye. Patrick gave them both a brief smile, a mumbled hello to keep up appearances, but then worked his way into his bedroom. He didn’t want to cry, but he did anyway. He was silent. He covered his face with his hands and let his tears soak into his palms until his sinuses ached and his fingers wrinkled. He wiped at his eyes afterward. He kneeled on his bedroom floor, still in his denim jacket that hid his now yellow wrists and re-sorted his vinyl.

Keeping his records in an alphabetical order wasn’t going to happen, so Patrick had made up his own system. Any albums by the same artist were stacked together, but then he kept them in genre order. To the left was Jazz, R’n’B in the center, his pitiful collection of metal closest to the door. No one else understood it, but as long as it was left alone, he didn’t mind.

His door opened a few hours later. Pete was standing there. Patrick looked up at him and couldn’t help the frown that folded over his features. Patrick remembered laying there in his own bed and letting Pete shove his fingers inside him. He looked down. 

“You don’t have to explain. I get it,” Patrick shrugged. Pete was trying something new, that’s what he said when he’d kissed Patrick against the wire mesh fence. He’d kissed Patrick and Patrick had taken it the wrong way.

“I wanted to be with you,” Pete said. He closed the door and stepped into the room, carefully avoiding Patrick kneeling in the middle of the room and sitting on the bed. His copy of War and Peace was sitting on Patrick’s nightstand, on top of the black notebook of lyrics. Patrick wondered if he’d spotted them. “I wanted to come back in here and fall asleep with you.”

“I wanted that too,” Patrick said eventually. He didn’t want to cry in front of Pete. He didn’t think he would, because he was exhausted from it already. His face was probably puffy. He probably looked dumb, still sitting on the floor in his work uniform and denim jacket, surrounded by strangely ordered records. 

“But you’re so gentle and kind and soft. Remember how I call you soft? And you let me do _anything._ Anything I wanted you’d have let me… and I don’t…I want you, Patrick, but I don’t want to screw you up with my poison. I need someone else that matches.”

“Someone like your girlfriend?” Patrick said. He’d made the mistake of sleeping with Pete when technically he was with someone else. They’d fought. She’d probably fucked the bartender, but they’d still been together. Patrick knew their pattern. 

“We fill each other with this poison, this nastiness and anger and I hate her so much because I love her, because she’s like me. They’re always like me. You’re not. I don’t want you to be like me, either. So, I can’t. You know?”

Patrick understood what Pete was saying, even if he didn’t believe it. Pete sounded upset, like he meant the words. Patrick had a hard time with games. He didn’t see the point. He shrugged his shoulder, so at least Pete knew that he’d heard him. 

“So you just want to pretend it didn’t happen?” Patrick asked eventually. At least he had the memories, he guessed. Pete had them too; of how Patrick had moaned his name, how he’d come without his dick being touched. How much he’d shaken afterward. 

“I just want us to be friends,” Pete said eventually. “I want us to be able to perform like before and to write music. I want you to finally get around to finding some lyrics you like from that book I gave you. So we can write a decent album and get it out there and get out of here.”

“So yeah, then? We just pretend,” Patrick asked. He looked over his shoulder at Pete. He was sitting hunched over. He looked thinner than before, his hair looked longer, though Patrick knew that he knew how to make himself seem smaller. “Even though you poured salt into my _soft_ open wound.”

“You’re the best friend I ever had, Patrick. I just don’t want us to lose that,” Pete said. He stood up. He put his hand on the back of Patrick’s neck and held it there. He’d pulled Patrick’s hair so tight at one point during their time on the couch, but it had made Patrick moan loud. “We shouldn’t lose that.”

“I guess not,” Patrick answered, still on his knees, not looking up, even when Pete ruffled his hair and left the room. 

 

Patrick was visiting his dad in the city to get away from the apartment. His dad took him out for pizza; for ice cream, and they wandered in and out of shops the rest of the day. Patrick loved both his parents equally, and his mom was great, but she was a raging feminist and if she found out what had happened between Patrick and Pete, she’d be at the apartment, packing his bags and possibly murdering Pete. Patrick’s dad was a lot more chill, which is why he explained his dour mood to him.

“I slept with Pete,” he said softly. “And I thought that meant that we would be--- but he got back with his girlfriend so we’re not anything else and it sucks.”

His dad didn’t have any hair, but if he did, his eyebrows raised so high they’d have disappeared. Patrick tried not to look at him. They were in the bookstore, at the back with the audiobooks. “Well. Did you use…did he…I hope you practiced safe sex.” Patrick sensed that his dad was trying to work out how the sex happened without wanting to know.

“He used a condom,” Patrick lied, and tried to look apologetic for giving his dad the answer he didn’t want. “I know it’s for the best because I’m stupid and he isn’t. He read War and Peace in a few weeks and I couldn’t even figure out the title.”

“Patrick, you’re not stupid. You have a disability,” his dad said, which was what he always said when Patrick referred to himself in that way. “You haven’t told your mother, have you?”

“No.” Patrick was angry at Pete, but he wouldn’t wish death on him in that way. “I don’t want her knowing. She’ll say he’s too old.”

“Eighteen and twenty-two is a big gap at your age,” his dad said, but he didn’t go on about it. “Do you want to listen to War and Peace?” his dad pulled out a plastic case from the shelf. It didn’t match the cover of Pete’s book, but Patrick figured it was the same. Patrick found audiobooks embarrassing now he was past the age of eleven. Only old people listened to them, or Illiterates like himself. 

“What’s it about?” Patrick asked. His dad had probably read it. He was a big reader.

“Napoleon invading Russia…how the Russian aristocracy dealt with it,” his dad said. Patrick couldn’t think of anything more unappealing to read. Still, he let his dad buy him the audiobook and he tucked it into the bottom of his backpack so no one else would find it. 

 

It’s not like Patrick forgave Pete for what he did but he just learned to deal with it. He didn’t spend much alone time with him, he took extra hours on at work. He hung out with Joe more. Pete went through two girlfriends in the space of a week. 

“I don’t know where he gets them from,” Patrick said to Joe, when Pete disappeared with another girl. “They all look the same and they all love him. You think they’d be warned off him by now.”

“Maybe he’s good in bed,” Joe said, and then pulled a face like he’d started to imagine Pete and wished he hadn’t. Patrick knew his skin was flushing with the truth. “Dunno, dude.”

“It’s weird,” Patrick said. They were playing music on the beat-up stereo in the corner and Joe was playing along quietly.

“We could write together, if you like?” Joe said quietly. “Pete gave you the notebook, right?”

“He did, yeah.” Patrick swallowed. Joe knew. He’d known that Joe knew for a while. It Patrick was driving them to shows, Joe called shotgun and sat in the front, quietly directing him. He read letters from the landlord aloud rather than passing it along. He always called Patrick rather than texting him. It was the little things that Patrick had noticed, but he couldn’t bear to say anything. “It’s alright, Joe. I’ll get around to it eventually.”

He’d chickened out from telling Joe, but the idea of him knowing was drenching him in shame. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t have someone outside of his family actually knowing. He ducked his head down, and mumbled an excuse to Joe, slouching off to his bedroom.

He tried that night to go through the notebook. He sat on his bed, with his lamp shining on the open pages. He tried the trick he’d been taught as a kid, holding a ruler under every word, to try and separate them, mouthing along when he could. He did it under his breath, with music on so that no one would hear him. He was so terrified of getting the lyrics wrong and Pete realizing. And he knew that the more upset he got, the more wavered the shapes became. He could barely read at all when he was calm. 

But he was running out of time. They were going on a two-week tour soon; Pete had gone ahead and booked studio time for when they got back. Patrick was expected to have made some headway on the songs. Anxiety was making him itch. He wanted to cry and run back to his mom’s house a little bit. He didn’t know how to fake it this time.

In the end he marched into Pete’s bedroom one day with his laptop, his guitar and Pete’s book. They hadn’t spoken again about what had happened. Patrick still had a crush; he still had this crushing hurt when he saw Pete, his girlfriend, and their ever-trading clothing collection, but nothing else could happen. He had been told by Pete himself.

“Read your favorite ones. I want to hear how you want them to sound,” Patrick said. He sat on the edge of Pete’s bed, trying to stare Pete down. He was reading a book, Patrick didn’t bother looking at the title, but it was infinitely thinner than War and Peace. 

“Isn’t it your job to sing the lyrics?” Pete asked, but Patrick was known to be a bitch when it came to recording, so he could get away with it now.

“Saves an argument later when I accidentally change intent.” Patrick already he had the basic sound recording set up. He just fiddled with the guitar, plucking it a little, until Pete closed his novel with a huff and opened the black notebook instead. He wasn’t in the mood for it, so he read the pages monotonously. The words, Patrick realized, weren’t cohesive song lyrics, but just snippets of thoughts and emotions. 

Patrick felt awkward as Pete spoke the words. They were drenched in revenge, anger and self-pity. Patrick had never felt any of those emotions enough to write about them like that. When Pete got to the end of page four, he closed it, looking pissed.

“Sorry, you know I don’t write cohesive. That’s what you’re for,” Pete said casually. He was looking at Patrick’s mouth, at where he was sitting on Pete’s bed, hunched over his laptop. ‘I don’t like being reminded of how I feel.”

“What about when I sing the lyrics though?” Patrick said, he stopped recording and closed the laptop lid. He placed his guitar on the floor. It had been a prop really. He pushed his glasses up his nose as Pete took a seat beside him. 

“They’re my words in your mouth, my sickness coming out of something like you,” Pete shrugged. There was a smirk on his face, but Patrick couldn’t recognize it, or the way his stomach seemed to flip at the comment. This felt like flirting. He remembered how he felt when Pete had kissed him against the chain-link fence. 

“I don’t know what something like me means,” Patrick shrugged. He hoped it didn’t sound like he was fishing for a compliment, it felt more like an insult.

“’Cause you’re something good and kind and then when you say my words…I dunno. It’s like a conscience. You’re like my Jiminy Cricket.” Pete jostled Patrick’s side with his elbow. It was a joke, but Patrick didn’t want to laugh. Instead he looked down at his knees and hoped his smile didn’t look too fake. “Everyone knows they’re not your words, that they’re mine. But it is way easier to hear them out of your mouth than mine. Even if it is a reality check.”

“Alright.” Patrick shrugged a shoulder again, even if he still wasn’t sure. They were sitting so close, Pete’s elbow was still tucked to Patrick’s side. “I guess I should probably go and—” Patrick made the motions to stand. Losing the closeness to Pete’s body as he stood. He hoisted the guitar and laptop up and smiled at Pete, scrunching his face up all the way. It made it easier to not see Pete and how lonely he looked hunched up over his bed.

Patrick didn’t sleep for three days. He mostly stayed in his bedroom, except for work. He listened to his recording of Pete over and over until he had the words memorized, then he tried to piece lyrics together or make a cohesive song out of them. He recorded himself saying the words that made sense, fudging sentences until they rhymed. When he had the lyrics basically done, he started on the music. Just something simple, a melody he’d had stuck in his head for a few weeks. The demo was rough, but no worse than any of their other ones. They could polish it in the studio.

He showed it to the rest of the guys when Andy was over. Patrick had slept most of the day, catching up on what he’d lost over the previous three nights. He still had enough of Pete’s mumbled recordings for another song. With the two they had now, and if they let Patrick write at least one song, that was five songs to take to the studio. A studio would be more chance to get Pete to sound out some lyrics. It was achievable. 

“That’s pretty good, Patty,” Pete teased, because he’d been in an unapproachable mood most of the day. Patrick couldn’t look at Joe, because if he did, he knew he’d see surprise on his face, questions, wanting to know how Patrick could possibly have read Pete’s notebook and made lyrics from them. “I sound even more of a dick.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not the one singing them,” Patrick said, because that was on him. He had to sing Pete’s depressing asshole words like they were his own. 

 

Eventually Pete admitted he liked the song. He said he had some changes he wanted to make but Patrick begged off; told him they could save that for the studio. He wasn’t sure how he was going to work out what they were doing, but they’d make it work somehow. It didn’t matter, they were going on tour.

Patrick was a homebody. He didn’t really like to party, and he didn’t really like the idea of becoming big enough that he may have to leave Chicago for California. He didn’t have big dreams, but he was happy to tag along with someone else. For now, he was excited for new shows in new venues. He was excited about after tour, when they’d spend time in a real life studio, with a producer. He’d have to work around the illiterate songwriter part for the time being, but he was excited for the rest of it.

The first show they did, somewhere in Wisconsin was okay. It didn’t feel that far from home, it’s where Andy was from and a lot of the crowd looked familiar. It calmed Patrick’s nerves when kids his own age would sing back. He laughed when Pete did his wild schtick. He only felt a little jealous when he realized Pete was seeking someone new for the night in the crowd. He'd permanently broken up with his girlfriend to tour. He had scratches down his left cheek from the final fight. 

They slept in the house of Andy’s current girlfriend. Well, Andy slept in her bed and the rest of them were in the living room. Joe had fallen asleep on the couch, so Patrick took the floor. Pete was still awake, sitting up in the kitchen. He had a notebook with him, and Patrick could imagine him sitting there, pen spilling out over the pages, the words falling from his thoughts to the page with no real difficulty. Patrick was amazed and jealous at how easy it came to him; the writing and the ability to write. He laid there thinking of Pete, who was sitting in the kitchen, thinking of someone else, probably.

The next few shows were a little scary. The further they got from Illinois, the less they had a fanbase. Their fans were more or less Patrick’s age, Patrick sure as hell couldn’t afford to travel outside the closest state to see his favorite band. They were depending more on word of mouth than anything else. It made the shows a little more intense. Patrick tried his best to sing, to play, to keep rhythm. Pete was useless on bass, but he carried them through the songs. Patrick could see the girls in the audience and some of the dudes too, looking at Pete in a way that suggested his charms weren’t limited to girls in the Chicago suburbs. And Patrick, of course.

A rare thing happened at a party in some state that was technically the Midwest, but was as West as Patrick had ever gone. He couldn’t remember the name of the town they were in, or where they were driving too next. They didn’t let Patrick drive anymore. He was officially too awful to drive anywhere but Chicago. He was relieved. There was no more trying to read the street signs when Joe fell asleep, no more taking them miles off track and using up the gas for stupid detours.

“You looked good up there.” Someone was talking to Patrick. It was a dude. Some guy that was at the show, but who didn’t look the part. He was probably just cruising, Patrick was aware of that. He was probably thirties, probably had a wife somewhere that had divorced him. He ran the club that had hosted them, Patrick had been introduced earlier.

“Oh thanks, do you come to these shows a lot?” Patrick asked. He probably sounded coy but that was mostly how he felt. He couldn’t talk with people he didn’t know. It had taken five dates to kiss his first girlfriend. He wasn’t good with new things.

“Only when I hear good things. I’ve heard good things about you guys.” That would be down to Pete and his sheer ability to network but Patrick didn’t want to give him the glory right now, so he just shrugged and smiled.

Patrick couldn’t flirt and he wasn’t really comfortable being flirted with, but the guy didn’t seem to care. Patrick just drank his lightly spiked juice and laughed after every third comment. The bar was packed, and they were supposed to be staying the night in some god-awful motel. Patrick’s mom would not allow him to be here if she knew where they were. 

He ended up sucking the guy’s dick before he left for the motel. He got on his knees in the back room. It smelt like beer, and it was cold and dark, but Patrick didn’t have to do much but keep his mouth open and his tongue flat. He had hands fisted in his hair and it reminded him of how Pete had done it. He thought about Pete at the wrong moment, thought about doing this with him; if Pete could even get his dick out of the stupidly tight pants he wore. When the man came it was salty on his tongue. He didn’t seem to mind Patrick coughing it up at his feet.

“You not done that before?” he asked, sounding surprised. He held out a hand and Patrick took it, heaving himself up. He’d been wearing a cap before the guy had thrown it from his head to grab tufts of his hair. He reached for his hat now and tucked it back over his head. 

“I’m not a virgin,” Patrick said, wiping at his mouth. There didn’t appear to be any intent to return the favor, but Patrick pretended not to mind. “Thanks, I guess.”

Patrick walked out of the backroom and out into the bar, trying to find the rest of the guys. He waited outside, by the shitty excuse for a van. No one else was there, not for another five minutes until Pete walked into view.

“Y’know, as the lead singer of a rock band, you’re not supposed to be the one on your knees,” Pete said. He was trying for teasing, but Patrick still heard the spite on his tongue. 

“Were you _watching?”_ Patrick asked, crossing his arms. He wished he hadn’t done it. He’d felt stupid, like he was being used, even if he was allowing it. He’d felt duped when there was nothing to dupe. He just wanted to be in their ugly apartment, watching a movie with Joe, eating pizza with friends and talking about their dreams rather than living them. 

“I wasn’t watching. Your lips are a dead giveaway.” Pete touched Patrick’s mouth. It was swollen, he already knew that much. “Your knees are dirty too.” Patrick looked down as Pete moved away to see the dust covered patches across his knees. 

“I wish I hadn’t done it,” Patrick admitted, watching Pete scuff his toes against the dry asphalt. Patrick could see Joe and Andy finally lumbering from the bar. Patrick’s phone was vibrating in his pocket, but he didn’t pick it out to see who it was. “I didn’t like it much.”

“’Cause he didn’t know you,” Pete mumbled, giving Patrick a quick side eye before the other two showed up. Patrick wanted to ask what that meant, but Joe was suddenly throwing his arm over Patrick’s shoulder. His breath, which bloomed across Patrick’s cheek with a laugh, stank of beer.

“You’re drunk,” Patrick laughed, as Andy unlocked the doors. Their gear was already packed away, and Patrick managed to hoist Joe into a seat before climbing over him. “Completely wasted.”

“Damn right,” Joe said easily, his eyes lidding into a dozy sleep.

They were gifted two rooms with the taking they got that night. Patrick usually bunked with Joe on those nights, because they _were the youngest_ Pete would say, but really, Andy had always been Pete’s friend first; Patrick didn’t really know him too well.

Tonight though, Pete said he wanted to go over some songs with Patrick and Joe was too drunk to question it. Patrick’s heart suddenly sunk to his stomach. He tried to think of ways around it but Andy was hauling Joe’s drunk, giggling ass into the room next door and tossing Patrick the key. 

“You two behave,” Andy said, looking pissed that he was landed with the drunk-ass and not one of the other two instead. Patrick watched him close the door before he turned around and unlocked the door to their room.

“I don’t know how I feel about songwr—” Patrick’s words were stopped when Pete pushed him into the room and kissed him. His tongue was in Patrick’s mouth and his fingers were pushing up Patrick’s shirt to press into warm, soft skin. 

Patrick allowed himself to be kissed by Pete. He was only a little smaller, but he liked being pressed against the door, liked that Pete’s fingers were almost pinching at his stomach, nails digging tight. When he pulled away, his lips were on Patrick’s neck, bottom row of teeth pressing against the skin. 

“I don’t want anyone touching you like that,” Pete said when he pulled away. “No one gets to have you like that.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick said, with not enough spite. He wriggled out from Pete’s grip all the same and pulled his shirt down, his hat off, and placed his glasses on one of the beds. It was a sparse room, though not as gross a motel room as Patrick had presumed from the movies. 

Patrick sat on the side of the closest bed and looked up at Pete staring at him from the door. Pete’s cheeks were flushed, his flat ironed hair frizzy, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed heavy.

“You don’t get to pick and choose when you want me,” Patrick said quietly. “That isn’t fair.”

“You know my reasons,” Pete said, and rubbed his hands over his face in frustration.

“I’m not poisonous enough?” Patrick looked over at Pete. “I’m not gonna do that again. I’m not soft enough for that. No matter what you think.” Patrick was surprised at himself. He presumed that he’d be a pushover, especially to Pete, who was the only dude he’d ever really liked that way. 

“So, it’s really a no right now?” Pete asked. “Even though I want nothing but you right now.”

“Yeah but then you’ll back out and I’ll get hurt and this isn’t like back home, where I can hide out in my bedroom until it stops hurting as much. I’d be stuck in a van with you, in a motel with you, watching everything you do, including one of the girls at the show, probably.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Pete lied, knowing full well it sounded perfectly him. When he looked at Patrick again, his mouth twitched, and his bony shoulder rose up and down. “Okay, maybe it does.”

“And you only want me because you’re jealous that I—”

“I don’t even want to think about you with someone else,” Pete interrupted, his face taking on a bitter twist. It was almost like he genuinely thought he owned Patrick. “He didn’t deserve you.”

“I don’t think it was that deep,” Patrick said softly. There was no animosity in his own voice and even Pete seemed mostly to have a bruised ego, than any seriously hurt feelings. “You’re just pissed you got rejected.”

“It doesn’t happen that often,” Pete said and then finally laughed when Patrick rolled his eyes at the comment. “I’ll try and keep my behavior in check, I guess. Try and sort myself out for the future.”

“Don’t try too hard,” Patrick teased, laughing when Pete did, and trying to soak in the softer atmosphere.

Patrick was so thankful that he didn’t end up sleeping with Pete on tour. It was bad enough that Pete seemed to take the rejection from Patrick as a way to find even more people to sleep with. Patrick was certain that he screwed half their fanbase in the Midwest. It was a little sucky for him, but worse, he figured, if he’d slept with Pete again and presumed they’d have a relationship after. 

They were getting on better though. Pete would tell jokes to Patrick privately, usually about Andy, with his arm thrown over his shoulder and Patrick would tell him off and there was a sense of ease, that Patrick didn’t ever remember there being. Pete gave him more scraps of paper on the nights they shared a room, and Patrick would look down at the writing and smile like he understood. It was just a reminder to himself over why he couldn’t get with Pete back home either; Patrick couldn’t read, and Pete was full of words, spilling out over any page that could hold them. 

By the time tour was finished, Patrick went back home to his mom’s for a week. Mostly because he wanted to use a shower with hot water and also to decompress away from his two friends that he loved, but had spent way too much time with recently. Plus she did all his washing and cooked real, decent meals for him. She chided him for losing weight, but Patrick wasn’t entirely convinced on that part. 

“I hope you were careful on tour, Patrick,” she said to him, on his fourth night at her place. It was just the two of them eating her baked pasta. His clothes smelled like lavender from her washing powder and his hair was so clean it had squeaked when he’d washed it. 

“Uh,” Patrick said, because he knew what she was getting at. He wasn’t Pete, after all. Some girls had flirted with him after the shows, but he hadn’t been interested. “Nothing happened like that.”

“You’re a teenager, Patrick, and you’re in a band. I don’t expect decent behavior,” she laughed happily to herself, but Patrick felt himself turning red. “Just behave within reason.”

“I slept with Pete,” he said instead, because he was somehow more willing to tell her about that than admit that he was the worst rock star ever because he hadn’t even fucked a groupie. “Made me want to not sleep with anyone else. I don’t know. I’m not interested.”

“Is he interested in you? Are you still…?” she wasn’t like his dad, who would politely change the subject. It’s why he never wanted to tell her in the first place. 

“No. It was just the once. He says… I dunno. That it wouldn’t work, but I just—I just don’t want to meet anyone else yet.” There was that dumb side of Patrick that was still holding out hope; when he was low he remember how Pete had wanted him on tour, said that he didn’t like the idea with Patrick with other people. It made it easier to get through the never-ending supply of girls and boys that Pete seemed to go through.

“Are you gay?” the comment had Patrick swallowing a mouthful of pasta without chewing. He coughed through the choking, pushing it down with a glass of water.

“I don’t know,” Patrick shrugged. “Does it matter? I’m only telling you so you stop making uncomfortable comments about my time on tour.” Patrick very rarely snapped at his parents, he was too respectful in that way. He knew though that his mom was turning red at his words and trying to think of ways to diffuse the situation.

“Did I tell you I got an email from Kevin in college last week. He’s got a new girlfriend!” she said instead. Patrick had never been more relieved for his older brother and his painfully dull emails before. 

As glad as he’d been to go back to his mom’s house after tour; to use up her hot water, and eat her tasty food, he was so much happier for going back to the apartment. After their awkward dinner together, she’d had a sudden interest in LGBT rights and asking Patrick’s opinions on things that he didn’t understand. She said she loved him, as if he didn’t know that already, and that sleeping with older men was a route that she didn’t want Patrick going down. He ended up spending most of his time back in his old room, with his headphones on, trying to drown out her words.

Patrick had to get back into the swing of not only being in a band but working at the grocery store too. That was a little harder. Getting up, wearing his name badge and directing harassed and frazzled people to the aisle that contained whatever fruit, vegetable or corn flour that they wanted. He’d walk past the record store that he always wanted to work at and browse the selection for a while before going home. 

Pete was apparently single for real this time. Patrick knew because Joe had told him. He’d got the fucking out of his system on tour and now wasn’t interested in his last girlfriend, the one before her or her boyfriend. He was turning over a new leaf, apparently, or so he’d told Joe the night before.

“I give it a week, dude,” Joe said, halfway through eating a sandwich. “Also we booked studio time real soon, so I hope you’ve been working on those lyrics Pete gave you on tour. If not, I can help if you like.” Patrick knew an olive branch when he saw one, but he couldn’t take it, so he just shrugged and promised that he had. 

Patrick spent the night in his bedroom, unfolding the random sheets of paper that Pete had handed him on tour. He tried as he always did, to pick out words by separating them with his ruler, by layering a yellow acetate over the page, all the tricks he’d been taught that still hadn’t helped his idiot brain understand what he was reading. 

He knew from the past, that the words that Pete handed him were just fragments of thoughts, not cohesive in any way, and that it was up to him to make sense out of them. He was the damn editor that couldn’t read past second grade. 

He was lucky that he’d tucked the paper, the acetate and the ruler away by the time Pete came into his room that night. He was never one to knock but Patrick hadn’t seen him since the end of tour, when they’d been drenched in layers of sweat, dirt and history. He looked good. Patrick looked down at his knees as Pete approached, throwing himself onto the bed.

“How you enjoying it?” Pete asked. Patrick made a huh noise in confusion before following Pete’s gaze to the bedside table, where War and Peace was sitting. 

“It’s long,” Patrick said. He’d been intermittently listening to the audiobook. Usually when he was trying to fall asleep so most of it had played on while Patrick was sleeping, but still. 

“Yeah. How are you?” Pete changed the subject. He looked healthy. Patrick had a crush on Pete, but even he knew when Pete was looking rough. He looked bright eyed, his face was clear of any leftover eyeliner and his hair had been cut, no longer hanging lank over his forehead. 

“Okay. Mom found out about…what happened and so—”

“You told your mom?” Pete asked, he suddenly sounded nervous.

“I think she was disappointed that she couldn’t tell me off being a terrible boy on the road, breaking hearts.”

“Isn’t that me? I’m the terrible boy that broke your heart?” Pete teased. Patrick shrugged a shoulder because it did hurt, a little bit. Pete’s hand was suddenly on his knee though, warm and tan. He curled it over Patrick’s knee and squeezed. Patrick smiled but tried not to react. 

“You look good,” Patrick said, breaking the moment. He moved his knee and Pete pulled his hand away. “I heard you’re turning over a leaf.”

“From Joe? The little gossip.” Pete pulled a face. “Hey, you want pizza? I’ll take you out to that new place across the road.”

Pete sounded nervous and Patrick was just about smart enough to work out he was being asked out on a date. Pete had cleaned himself up, he wasn’t dating anyone else, and he was attempting to hit on Patrick because he wanted him. He’d even almost apologized for breaking Patrick’s heart. He wanted to say yes because he was about as into Pete as he’d always been and if Pete’s hand had been on his knee any longer, Patrick would probably be on his back right now. But then he remembered that they were going into the studio in just over a week and he’d spent two hours earlier, trying to read words that Pete had written, and he hadn’t been able to do it and what would be the point in that? He’d never be smart enough for Pete. Patrick couldn’t even listen to a book Pete enjoyed without falling asleep three paragraphs in.

“I’m kinda tired actually,” Patrick lied, adjusting his glasses. He licked his lips and didn’t look as Pete closed up beside him. “Another time?”

“Sure thing.”

Patrick kind of presumed that Pete would start sleeping around again, in part because Patrick had rejected him and Pete always reacted like that with rejection, but from what Patrick had seen and heard, Pete had done nothing but write and write and write. Sometimes he woke up to pages wedged beneath his door, Pete’s black ink scrawl decorating the pages. He didn’t even look at them for how it made him feel, all those words for him that he couldn’t work out. Maybe they were about him, or some girlfriend he used to love. Maybe they weren’t about love at all. Maybe they were all made up. On more than one occasion Patrick found himself lost for breath with damp cheeks, the panic catching him round and round his chest until he couldn’t see. 

They were a week from recording when all hell broke loose. Patrick had been at work all day and was bone tired, his headphones had broken and the anxiety was building so much that he thought he might actually die. Then he unlocked the door to the apartment to see Joe trying to calm Pete down, who was, as Patrick could tell, in the middle of one of his usual meltdowns. 

“I’m fucking done with this, Joe. Oh look there’s the little asshole, thinking he’s so much better.” Pete had turned on Patrick the moment he opened the door. “You think you’re so good, huh? This band would be fucking nothing without me.”

The only thing Patrick could muster was a simple ‘huh’. He suddenly noticed that his bedroom door was open and across the shared area of the apartment was all of the scattered sheets of paper that Pete had handed him over the past few weeks. The ones he was supposed to have been turning into songs. 

“What’s the matter? “Patrick asked quietly. He pushed his glasses up his nose and tried his hardest to look confused, pushing the panic away. “Pete, what’s wrong?”

“What’s the matter? I’m the one that’s put up half the money for the studio. I hooked the studio with the best producer we could afford and you said you were working on the music. Taking my words after we agreed I was the lyricist. Instead you’ve got nothing.”

“You don’t know that,” Patrick said. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried not to look at Joe, who was looking like he’d spent the last few hours trying to calm Pete. “I do have some stuff.”

“A handful of demos we’ve all heard isn’t anything. Not any of the new shit. Why? Don’t act like you’re better than—”

“I’m not acting anything like that!” Patrick put his hands up in defense, like he was shielding himself from Pete, who was standing across the room.

“Then why haven’t you done anything. Why have you stopped writing?” Pete pointed to the papers surrounding the floor. “Is this not good enough for your standards.”

“No, it isn’t that I promise,” Patrick said, licking his lips, like he always did when he was nervous. He pushed his glasses up again even when they hadn’t slipped. “You’re an amazing writer, Pete.”

Pete’s dark skin was flushed with red anger and Patrick could barely look at him. He almost wanted to cry. “Then what the fuck is stopping you?”

“He can’t fucking read.” They both turned to Joe at that comment. Patrick almost lost his balance, the humiliation bearing down onto his shoulders. Pete meanwhile, just laughed. 

“Dude, I think he can read. I know you like to take his side and shit.”

“I can read,” Patrick whispered lightly. Because he could. He _could._ At least to a very small degree.

“If he couldn’t read then he wouldn’t be able to have written the songs he has done,” Pete insisted. Patrick couldn’t look at him, but he could _hear_ the eye roll in his tone. 

“He can’t. You ever had a text from him? You ever seen him write something down? He can’t read the road signs or how else does he always get us lost when we’re away from home.” It was that comment that had Pete looking at Patrick strangely, like something clicked. Patrick took his glasses off and tried to stop his jaw from wobbling. 

“It’s just dyslexia,” he said softly. “It’s not... It’s not the end of the world.”

“How did you graduate high school if you can’t read?” Pete sounded so genuinely confused that all his anger of the last few moments had completely faded. Patrick thoughts were flooded with school memories. The being able to understand at the back of class, but not able to make out a dime, and seizing up when faced with exams and quizzes. The time when his parents finally figured out that he wasn’t just dealing with ADHD, but he had genuine issues regarding literacy. The time when they decided he needed to be in _the special_ classes. The ones where he had someone beside him, reading and writing for him. 

“I have to go,” Patrick said softly, deciding that no, he couldn’t be there, faced with his two best friends and his own deepest secret. Knowing that Joe knew had been hard enough, Patrick had always backed out admitting it to him.

Patrick went to his dad’s house because his dad didn’t ask questions like mom did, plus he was still in the office. He went there and tried to block out the last day of his life. Maybe the last six months. Maybe the last eighteen months, so that he never met Joe in the bookstore and he became who he was destined to be. A low-level worker dreaming of a better life. 

Patrick sat on his bed and listened to the melody in his head, blocking out the memories flooding. His dad was still at work, he wouldn’t be back until late, but he wouldn’t know Patrick was there. If he could disappear into the faded blue comforter he would. It would be better than this; better than everyone knowing how dumb he actually was.

“Hey Patrick” he jumped at the sound. He’d zoned out into the sounds in his own head and hadn’t heard the sound of a key in the lock, footsteps in the hallway, or the bedroom door opening. He sat up straight on the bed and saw Pete standing there. He almost looked sheepish.

“How did you get in?”

“Uh. Well, your dad told us all where he kept the spare key,” Pete said, shrugging. “Under the doormat.”

“Oh.” Patrick shrugged. “Okay.”

Pete closed the door behind him and slowly walked over to the bed Patrick was sitting on. He sat beside him, close enough that their elbows knocked together. Patrick tried to think of something to say, a joke to make, but nothing came to mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I was trying to… trying to make sense of the words you’d been writing.”

“I always thought dyslexia was just not being able to spell or read quick,” Pete said softly. “Sounds like yours is worse than that. Can you read at all?”

“A little,” Patrick admitted. His skin felt itchy and hot, he wanted to squirm away, so he didn’t have to face up to this. “I wasn’t diagnosed until late. They thought I just had ADHD for years and that’s why I wasn’t concentrating in class. Then one of my teachers was concerned and told my parents to get me tested. Maybe it was too late or maybe I’m just that dumb. I don’t know. There’s never been much improvement so now I just work around it.”

“How did you put my words to song?” Pete asked. “Wait. You recorded me saying them back to you last time. When you came into my bedroom. So that’s how you did it?”

“Yeah. Then I just cut and paste where I thought I could make sense. I can’t understand rhyme patterns on paper, but I get it with music. I can make sense of words that way.” Patrick was looking at his knees and not at Pete beside him. He was also burning up, he could feel the heat radiating off him. “I don’t want to stop creating music.”

“I’m not gonna take that away. So what if my best editor; the music writer of the band is illiterate. I didn’t think we could get any weirder, but I dig it.” Pete put his arm over Patrick’s shoulder and kissed his red-hot cheek. “You should’ve told me.”

“Would you tell people if it was you? It’s humiliating.” Patrick finally turned to look at Pete, who was gazing at him intently, with a warm smile on his face. It made him want to blush, if he had the ability to do it right now. 

“Dude, I got enough issues of my own without adding that to it,” Pete teased. Then he stopped, waving his hand to finalize the end of the conversation. “We can talk more about that later. I wanna know now why you keep rejecting me.”

“You rejected me first,” Patrick said. “You took my virginity and then left. So. You know…”

“I thought we went over that when we were on tour.” Pete rolled his eyes. “I’m… I’m better now. I stopped sleeping around, I feel like I’m in a good place. I’ve been going to therapy and shit. No poisonous relationships with ex-girlfriends. I asked you out on a proper date and you said no!”

“Because you read War and Peace in your downtime like it’s no big deal and you write and write and write like you have to. I had to get my mom to write out my name badge for work because I was so worried I’d get it wrong. We’re too different.”

“Fuck off with that,” Pete snorted. “You listen to Elvis Costello like he’s God and you hate Guns n Roses which is the like the most stupid opinion in the world but that doesn’t make me not want you any less. Should I even ask why you have my copy of War and Peace in your room if you can’t read it.”

“My dad bought it for me on audiobook, but it just reminds me of you. I don’t know…” Patrick shrugged, embarrassed again. He figured being eighteen was enough of a reason to feel stupid right now. 

“The book sucks. I couldn’t even finish it,” Pete admitted. Patrick couldn’t work out whether he was lying for Patrick’s sake or not. He decided he didn’t mind. 

“If you asked me out again, I might say yes,” Patrick said. “If you wanted to, I mean. But only… if I get to choose the restaurant.”

Pete’s dark eyes stared at him for a few seconds, working it all out. “You only go to restaurants where you know the menu. I could always read it to you.”

“That’s not… cool.” Patrick didn’t have to explain because Pete understood. Pete didn’t ever want people questioning the meds he took. He’d understand in his own way. 

“We don’t have to go out on a date. We could just stay here,” Pete said, and his arm which had been over Patrick’s shoulder, moved lower, so his palm was flat to Patrick’s back. He was leaning in, to kiss Patrick, who this time did nothing but allow it. 

They kissed for minutes. Patrick put his hands to Pete’s shoulders, remembering how it was last time when they kissed in the motel, or before, against the chain-link fence on the way home. Pete was calmer now, he was just kissing Patrick, just touching him. 

“I can suck your dick,” Patrick said, when they broke away. Pete’s face buried immediately in the side of Patrick’s neck, sucking on the skin. He wanted to give Pete head because he’d been so jealous about Patrick with that dude on tour. He wanted Pete to have that instead. 

Pete was pushing him down onto the bed, so Patrick went with it, laughing when Pete’s kisses turned wet and squelchy against his neck. Pete sat up, red faced, dark hair messed over it his head. He was pretty hot when he wasn’t trying so hard. It made Patrick’s stomach flip, even when Pete’s hand rested hard against his belly, beneath his shirt. 

“That sounds good. But not today. I wanna make you feel good,” Pete said instead. Patrick nodded, but he was fairly certain he’d feel good about having Pete’s dick in his mouth. Way better than he had before with the owner of that venue. 

Pete lost his shirt first this time, which Patrick was happy about. It meant he wouldn’t be the only one naked; not like before on the couch. His hands were on Patrick’s belt, neatly undoing it. Maybe Patrick would be getting his dick sucked. He’d heard Pete complain that he never did that, but Pete talked a lot. Some of it was bound to be bullshit. 

Pete mouthed at the waistband of Patrick’s underwear for a moment. Patrick didn’t know what to do, whether to laugh or put his hands in Pete’s hair or what. Pete mouthed at him through his briefs, his dark eyes flicking up to stare at Patrick. Then he moved to kiss the inside of Patrick’s thigh. His teeth grazed and his mouth sucked, until small red spots started to spread across Patrick’s thighs. 

“Am I really the only person that’s had your ass?” Pete asked when Patrick’s thighs were actually wet from kisses, and his briefs were feeling uncomfortably tight. Patrick nodded his head, wondering whether it was lame to feel proud about it or not. He didn’t have time to think because Pete’s thumb suddenly pressed against his ass over the underwear and Patrick choked out a moan. “Good.”

Pete practically had to peel Patrick’s underwear down and he knew his legs were shaking but he didn’t know what to do about it. In a way he was glad that Pete was so experienced, but in another, he wondered if what he was doing was good enough. 

“I thought you didn’t suck d- ah!” Patrick moaned when Pete took him into his mouth, his hands firm on Patrick’s legs, keeping them bent and open. He’d had one blow job in his life, from the girl he’d dated before dumping and this was just as intense. Pete didn’t really suck, but mouthed at the head, always watching Patrick’s expression. Patrick for what it was worth, had his hands fisted into the bedsheets, unsure how Pete would feel about hands in his hair.

“I don’t suck often,” Pete said eventually. His voice was a little thick and when he leaned over to kiss Patrick, his jean clad groin felt hard against Patrick’s hip. It made him a little excited. “I do something else I know you’ll love.”

“Oh yeah?” Patrick laughed, trying to kiss Pete even when he moved away. He ducked his head down, kissed Patrick’s hip and then grabbed at Patrick’s hips, pushing him up. Patrick knew what was coming before it came, but Pete’s thumbs spreading his cheeks was enough for him to close his eyes to the dizziness. The feel of Pete’s tongue, wet and slick against his ass had him slipping out a huge whine.

“Patrick, do you want your daddy to hear you getting your ass eaten?” Pete said, stopping his tongue from wiggling its way inside Patrick to make the comment.

If Patrick was of a sound mind, he’d tell Pete that he hasn’t called his dad daddy since he was about five, but as it was, he was discovering the feel of a tongue in his ass, so could say nothing but “he’s still at work.”

He felt so exposed but didn’t know what to do about it. Pete’s thumbs were holding Patrick open; he could feel it, and then the tongue, swirling around making him feel wet. Pete’s spit was trickling between his legs and he kept forgetting to breathe. Pete’s fingers made their way inside eventually. He was rough with them, making Patrick feel them. He stopped rimming him to sit up, swollen lipped. He was fingering Patrick so hard that Patrick actually moved with the motion, he could see how he was jiggling on the bed, but he couldn’t care too much because Pete had wrapped his hand around Patrick’s dick and he was jerking him hard. Fingering him, wanking him. Patrick didn’t know what to do but allow himself to be fucked.

“Babe, my wrist is killing me,” Pete teased and with that Patrick let go. There was something about the fact he was clenching around fingers that made it all the more tense. He half didn’t want Pete to ever pull them up. Like a slutty puppet. 

Pete did pull his fingers out eventually and made a show of wiggling them to test his circulation. His other hand, which had been fisted tight over Patrick’s dick, was sloppily wiped over his jeans. Only then did he look at Patrick and smile. 

“Was that good for you?” Pete asked, laughing when Patrick nodded. He leaned over, gently pushing Patrick’s hair back, kissing his forehead. He was still hard, Patrick could still feel it. Patrick’s body felt kinda wrecked. Sensitive. 

“What about you?” Patrick asked, trying not to look past his soft dick at his bruised thighs, but he was fascinated. It reminded him of how his wrists had looked the first time. 

“Ideally, I want my dick in your ass, if you’re up for it?” Pete asked. He was trying to be confident, but even post-orgasm, Patrick could sense the gentleness in his tone. He wouldn’t do it if Patrick said no. “I knew you’d be too tight to fuck with no lube. S’why I fingered you instead.”

Pete had something in his hand that Patrick hadn’t noticed before. He must have grabbed it from the bathroom, which meant this was pre-planned. It made Patrick feel all excited and only slightly duped. It was only handcream. The rose-scented one his stepmom used. Patrick just nodded his head. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t last long,” Pete promised, and put his hands on Patrick’s hips, gesturing for him to roll over. Patrick couldn’t really function if he was being honest, so he let Pete move him like a doll. He was kneeling, pillows under his hips, legs open. He still felt a little stretched, and Pete would be able to see it all anyway.

He closed his eyes as he heard Pete pull his zipper down. The sound of a wallet opening, foil ripping. Pete’s gentle moans as he rolled a condom over his dick. Patrick tried to block out the scent of roses as Pete slicked up with hand cream, because it was a bit too weird, but then Pete was there, straddling him from behind, his cock slipping against Patrick’s slightly stretched ass.

It went in smooth, much more than last time, but Patrick couldn’t even think to clench. He just let Pete take him it felt so good. It was still intense, it was a little over sensitive considering he’d already come, but it felt good having Pete inside him. 

Pete was almost completely on top of him, chest over his back, face in the side of his neck and hands over Patrick’s as his thrust. Patrick could hear the noises he was making; tiny little puffs, like Pete was fucking the breath out of him. The smell of roses was almost too much weirdness, it was bringing Patrick out of it, but then Pete’s sharp hips were crashing into Patrick’s ass harder, jilted and rough until he was buried all the way and moaning hard, teeth sharp on Patrick’s shoulder. 

Patrick only really came back to his senses when Pete pulled out. Patrick was still sprawled face down on the bed, even with the sound of Pete pulling off the condom and his heavy breaths. Patrick laughed slowly as he turned, thinking that maybe he might like to put some pants on.

“You’re not gonna tell anyone are you?” he asked slowly, watching the muscles in Pete’s back quiver as he stretched. He flopped on the bed beside Patrick and gave him a filthy look.

“What? That you’re a tight fuck that likes getting his ass eaten?” Pete teased. Patrick noticed his underwear still dangling around his left ankle and wriggled around until he could pull them back up.

“I mean, I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone about that, but I meant more about the dyslexia.”

“Oh.” Pete’s brow furrowed. “Well, Joe already knows so it would just leave Andy and maybe he does too. Outside of that, it’s no one’s business. Leave the getting famous to me, just write the music, Patrick.”

“I might need your help if we’re recording in a few days,” Patrick said. He heard the sound of his dad’s tires pulling into the driveway and it figured maybe it was time for them to look a lot less naked. 

“Yeah. I’ll help with that.” Pete smiled. “Don’t worry, Patrick. I got us covered.”


End file.
